The chief financial officer (CFO) for badpuppy.com contacted me in late 2013 and offered to search the company's files for additional information about photos of U.S. Judge Bill Pryor that showed up on the gay-porn site in the 1990s.
Chad Belville, who also serves as general counsel, said the company was receiving inquiries from other media outlets, and he would let me know what the research turned up. Belville never got back to me, and he has not responded to e-mails seeking an update.
Does that mean the company started receiving political pressure--from the right, the left, or both--and decided to keep its information under wraps? Did the company see news of my kidnapping and incarceration and decided to call off plans to research the Bill Pryor topic? Was my "arrest" designed as a warning to Badpuppy, and perhaps others, that the Pryor story had better be left alone? The answer to the first two questions is yes, in my view. And I wouldn't be surprised if the answer to the third question also is yes.
Badpuppy's home base for roughly 20 years has been Cocoa, Florida. That just happens to be in the U.S. Eleventh Circuit (along with Alabama and Georgia), where one of the sitting judges is William H. Pryor. Is it possible that federal judges in the Eleventh Circuit could cause a lot of problems for a gay-porn company that helped disrobe one of its brethren? It doesn't require a lot of imagination to come up with an answer to that question
My communications with Belville have not turned up anything new about Bill Pryor. But they do provide insight into a company that has become a "super store" of gay pornography online. For example, the company was sold not long before we broke the Pryor story here at Legal Schnauzer. And while Badpuppy is known for its digital presence, its record keeping is, to a great extent, from the world of yesteryear. Here is what Belville wrote in an e-mail dated September 22, 2013--which was one month and one day before my unlawful arrest:
Hi Roger!
Badpuppy was sold to a man named Craig Jackson earlier this year after being owned by William Pinyon since its inception in 1995. I am currently serving as the CFO and General Counsel to Badpuppy Enterprises Inc.
The records for the site as it existed in 1997 are in file cabinets -- about 3 dozen of them -- and we are going to start digging into those files Monday morning. Other news outlets have begun to contact us regarding the nude image that was published on Badpuppy and we'd like to find some evidence that either supports the assumption that image is in fact Judge Pryor or shows that it is not him. . . .
I look at the photographs and I believe that is a young Bill Pryor.
Sincerely,
Chad Belville CFO and General Counsel, Badpuppy Enterprises Inc.
So, we've established that a top executive at badpuppy.com thinks the photo is of the Bill Pryor--not that I had any doubt about that. Here is my response to Belville:
Thanks for contacting me, Chad.
As you might have seen on my blog, I have three sources who were connected to a law-enforcement investigation that commenced upon receipt of a tip about the images in 1997--Pryor was set to be appointed Alabama attorney general at the time. Those sources say their investigation showed the images were of the Bill Pryor who now is a federal judge, and that's what my story is based upon.
I'm intrigued by the notation at the top of the WizardBoy Gallery that says the images were from a private collector named Ernie. Seems to be a clue about their origins.
I hope we can stay in touch.
As for the mysterious Ernie, we now suspect he was Ernie Potvin, the late writer and archivist who was well known in the gay-rights movement, especially on the West Coast. Ernie Potvin was extremely well connected, and several of his friends have been in touch with us about information on the likely origins of the Bill Pryor photos, which reportedly number between 10 and 15.
Bill Pryor
As for Chad Belville, we learned that he thinks like a prosecutor--because he used to be one. And he offered some intriguing legal insights about the Pryor story:Thank you for your response Roger!
I'm hoping to find out more about the circumstances surrounding the removal of those pages from the websites in 1997. I was a prosecutor in 1999-2002 and I still think like one -- there is something fishy that happened here. If those images were removed to protect Pryor and Pryor knew about it, then Pryor intentionally covered up or failed to disclose he posed nude, he committed ethical violations. In a lot of high profile cases it is not the original act that gets a person in trouble, it is the attempted cover up. The impeachment of President Clinton was not for getting a blowjob in the Oval Office, he was accused of lying to Congress about it. Martha Stewart didn't get prosecuted for insider trading, she was prosecuted for lying to investigators.
Hopefully our internal searches at Badpuppy will uncover the truth about the images. I will let you know if we find anything.
Sincerely,
Chad
As you probably can tell, Chad Belville seems like a sharp guy, and I enjoyed my limited communication with him. He's in a key position at a company in transition, so it's possible he never found the time to do thorough research on the Pryor issue. It's also possible that political pressure from Pryor's protectors on the right convinced the company that it would be best to lay low on the subject.
And here is something for Schnauzer readers to ponder: I've seen signs that certain political forces on the left do not want the Pryor photos out there--at least not any more than they already have been. In fact, I've had one or two well-known media figures on the left try to discredit my reporting and not-so-subtly steer me away from the story.
Why would that be? Well, I have quite a bit of information on the subject. I also have a theory about what caused blow back from the left. If my theory proves correct, it is a fascinating story indeed--one tied to recent and historic news events.